


Two-Hearted

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: A Study in Scarlet, Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Inspiration, Muses, Origins, Sherlock's magic & John's gun, Wilderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 00:35:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We don’t realise,” Sherlock’s saying, “it’s a wild out there.  I don’t have a death wish.”</p>
<p> <br/>The muse of A Study in Scarlet (and Pink), and the fog that wraps them always.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two-Hearted

_" In the central portion of the great North American[Continent](http://www.literaturepage.com/read.php?titleid=astudyinscarlet&abspage=68&bookmark=1) there lies an arid and repulsive desert… Listen as one may, there is no shadow of a sound in all that mighty wilderness; nothing but silence-- [complete](http://www.literaturepage.com/read.php?titleid=astudyinscarlet&abspage=68&bookmark=1) and heart-subduing silence. **"** \--ACD, A Study in Scarlet_

  
  
 A wilderness. A woman with hair the tannic tea of the autumn brook, garments the colors of ground fog, wild catmint and birch, overlay of crow feather, oak boots, twin girds of fog flower and strong magic, weather-magic, the magic of grove and stream, the channel that carried the wild of the New World back across the sea and flowed red through the pen that one Portsmouth afternoon cataracted a silence and the shade of a sound, poured forth two hearts that would never, ever stop.  
  
 *******  
For the twenty-first Sherlock takes for hair the bark and the crow, for eyes the fog and the birch; the magic for deduction again, again. John takes the arm-steadying trunk of the oak, speaks--while Sherlock runs with the stream cascades into the skip, spins,winks,hooks one-handed a salmon-spawned case--his secret name fantastically out loud.

“We don’t realise,” Sherlock’s saying, “it’s a wild out there.  I don’t have a death wish. When I’ll die I’ll…”

“Ah,” John says, strokes the keys, “I already know.”

*******

They were born in a fog, from the copper vine of old blood, the quirk-mouthed two-hearted muse awakened in the stream.

Their screens are sunsets now, their lips different in this light.

John leans the arm on nothing and sends it true, life-magic in the shell, into the brain of the beast.

**Author's Note:**

> "There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it."--ACD, A Study in Scarlet


End file.
